


Eros Came Out of Heaven

by JCutter



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: 4000 Years of Slowburn, Historical Accuracy, Historical Anachronisms, M/M, Mutual Pining, Oneshot set in the Phersu!verse, POV Crowley (Good Omens), Script Book Compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-30
Updated: 2020-01-30
Packaged: 2021-02-27 07:02:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,606
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22473025
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JCutter/pseuds/JCutter
Summary: The first chapter ofPhersufrom Crowley's point of view.Crowley comes to Rome to tempt Emperor Caligula, and though it did not go nearly as expected, not all of the surprises are unpleasant.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 12
Kudos: 40
Collections: Phersu!verse





	Eros Came Out of Heaven

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Phersu](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21876781) by [JCutter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/JCutter/pseuds/JCutter). 



> I had briefly considered writing a companion piece from Crowley's point of view, but it would have taken considerably more research on ancient Rome! So here is just the first chapter of that would-be work, and hopefully it offers some insight into Crowley's mind as the story begins.

**Dramatis Personae**

**Caligula, Emperor:** Coronated following the death of Emperor Tiberius and the third Emperor since the office was founded, Emperor Caligula was renown for being cruel and unpredictable. During his reign, he vastly expanded the rights and power of the Emperor.

 **Claudius:** The last direct male descendant of the first Emperor, Augustus. He was long-since ostracized by his family due to a considerable number of health defects and a stutter, and was never viewed as a threat by his extended family and political enemies.

 **Petronius:** Most famous for his satirical manuscript, the _Satyricon_ , which called into question the time period’s thoughts on virginity, homosexuality, and romance. He would later go on to become the _elegantiae arbiter_ of Emperor Nero’s court. He was considered a frank and energetic man, dedicated to the pleasures of life, which he defined as food and fashion. 

**Latin Glossary**

**__**_amphora:_ a tall ceramic jug with two handles, used for serving beverages.

 ** __** _notitia:_ translated literally, an acquaintance; however over time it gained the connotation of carnal knowledge of a person who is not a friend.

 _popina:_ a wine bar that typically caters to lower income citizens; furnished only with stools and tables, and serves light appetizers along with wine.

 _quaestor_ : the court official in charge of revenue and expenditure.

_sesterces:_ a large brass coin, and common currency during the Roman Empire.

* * *

_“Eros came out of heaven,_

_dressed in a purple cape.”_

Fragments of Sappho

  
  


**Ziti Luminis Tavern, Rome || January, 41 AD**

Crowley had only been in Rome for fifteen days and every wretched hour had been worse than the last.

Upon arrival, he had intended to sprinkle some corruption into the imperial seat. A little undermining of central power here, a little distrust of organized government there. The trick was to add a dash of garlic, not shove a string of unpeeled cloves down Rome’s throat.

Emperor Caligula did not need one drop of tempting. When he wasn’t violating his sisters or murdering errant relatives, he was sowing chaos the likes of which Crowley only imagined. The day Crowley arrived, he entered court to find Caligula’s _quaestor_ stripped naked and laid spread-eagle on the ground. Three guards stood over the man, standing on his clothes, and flogged him until he bled.

Hoping that was a fit of pique and there was still some decent tempting to be doing, Crowley decided to hang around and savor some of humanity’s more brutal delights. He lined up with other citizens outside the Circus[1] for the free seats when the venue opened, making conversation with the locals and getting a flavor for the language and the clothing. Too bad a tunica, a toga and bloody _sandals_ didn’t do a blessed thing against the January chill. He nicked a wool square from a nearby wagon and threw it around the shoulders of his tunica, which only marginally helped.

To help bolster against the cold, he plied a nearby family for wine and managed to stir the men and their nearly-adult sons into a loud and bawdy song, which was echoed and amplified by the surrounding crowd. Knights – who received free seats anyway but seemed to enjoy the gatherings – and commonfolk joined them, and it turned into quite a nice introduction to Roman outdoor parties.

Unbeknownst to any of them, the raucous noise was driving Caligula into a rage. The man sent his guards to break up the crowd for “disturbing the peace” and the Praetorian Guards did so with cudgels and relish. They released people’s horses as well as the horses meant for the chariot races the following day, and their stampede rivaled the human one. Twenty knights were crushed to death, as well as a countless number of others. In an effort to escape, Crowley grabbed the reins of a horse to mount it, and the horse had turned to him screaming like he was a snake. _Lucky guess._

The horse tried to dash Crowley’s brains from his head with two shining front hoofs, and Crowley had scrambled backwards and followed the rest of the crowd.

Crowley had barely gotten out still-corporeal himself.

Caligula was gleefully malicious at the gladiatorial shows. He fed the animals criminals of all levels, he took down the shaded awnings to watch people cook in the heat, he matched decrepit or elderly criminals with the best warriors just to warm them up, and he shut up the granaries of poor neighborhoods just to starve them out.

 _Caligula doesn’t need to be tempted. Caligula needs to die,_ Crowley decided after a week of this. 

Not remotely in the mood to even _look_ at a horse, or a circus, or a show, Crowley had snapped to his insula landlord that he would be staying another week. He hoped he survived; a gust of wind blew past his window on the spindly penthouse level and the whole building bent in the breeze like a stalk of wheat. He needed a drink, a nice low-level temptation to ease the burn of being scooped _again_ , and then a long rest.

Crowley stumbled into the first popina he saw and threw himself onto the long stone bench in front of the bar. The bartender ignored him completely. He gave her three minutes before he cursed the rest of her shift with needy drunkards. He cleared his throat as officiously as he could manage.

When that didn’t garner her attention, he finally ground out, “What have you got?”

The bartender shot him a look like _he_ was inconveniencing _her_ with his patronage. “It’s all written up there,” she gestured to the sign above them, written in such low-brow Latin, it was almost all slang, “Two sesterces an amphora for everything except the Greek retsina.”

Great, a new currency, a new unit of measuring volume, whatever the hell ‘retsina’ was, and no _actual drink contents._ Crowley had had it up to _here_ with humans today. “I’ll have a jug of whatever you think is drinkable,” he said in resignation.

“Jug of house brown. Two sesterces,” the bartender said, _thunk_ ing down a jug. She still had not looked at him once since he walked in. He got better customer service in Hell. He leaned the jug toward him and inhaled skeptically. The drink smelled far better than the ones in Heaven at least.

Then from behind him, the creme de la creme of his week, the glistening cherry on top of the shite pudding.

An achingly familiar voice said, “Crawly— Crowley?”

Crowley turned to see Aziraphale looking at him, bright and smiling, toga as preening white as his robed uniform on the Eastern Gate. Obviously Rome was treating _him_ well. Crowley looked away and filled his cup with whatever in Satan’s name was house _brown_. He would not deal with sanctimonious angels sober.

“Fancy seeing you here!” Aziraphale bubbled, as if their last meeting wasn’t in the shade of a cross slowly killing a man Crowley had spent years getting to know. He spent the next years watching the stories of their years together be hidden and burned and lost.

Aziraphale _bubbled_ , as if the time before that meeting wasn’t an hour before God drowned everyone in the central continent and then thought hanging a rainbow over their watery graves meant anything.

It _had_ been a nice rainbow. Crowley had looked up at the refracting light from the deck of the creaking Ark and remembered making a sky full of starlight scattering through clouds and making rainbows that stretched beyond the visual spectrum of a human. Had Aziraphale gazed at the rainbow when he brought the olive branch to Noah, before flying away for good? Was it worth the genocide?

“Still a demon, then?” Aziraphale asked. Crowley’s head was still full of bloody splinters and the floating bodies of children, and the angel was either making a joke Crowley didn’t understand, or is having the _gall_ to to bring up the Harrowing...

“What kind of stupid question is that?” He snapped. “‘Still a demon?’ What else would I be, an aardvark?” After the Crucifixion, Crowley had wandered through Africa just to clear his head. And out there on the savannah, he saw what had to be some monstrosity caused by faulty cage latches aboard the Ark. It was a rat-ish creature with a pig snout, hooves and rabbit ears. Crowley had watched in disgusted fascination as it extended an anteater tongue to collect insects. If Crowley had, in fact, been _Harrowed_ , he would have lived as some freakish human/angelic Nephilim _ish_ hybrid.

Aziraphale blinked. Crowley watched the angel’s face fall, hurt and self-recrimination dulling those turquoise eyes, and Crowley felt a flash of regret.

Crowley knew he was bitter. He had misjudged Aziraphale four thousand years ago and had felt a flutter of _something_ tucked under that impossibly different angel’s wing against the rain. Crowley’s disillusionment since was his own fault. Aziraphale had never lied to him, and should not be bearing the brunt of Crowley’s misjudgement.

In 4004 BC, not terribly long after Crowley’s Fall, he got his first significant assignment. Go up there and make some trouble. Go up to the Garden and tempt one of the humans into going against God’s will in some matter. Degree didn’t matter, just see how susceptible they were.

And Crowley had. Fruit “for the gods,” early drafts of the Bible said. Could it even give humans the power to discern Good and Evil? Crowley honestly thought not and fully expected the Fruit and all its otherworldly knowledge would pass through the human body like unchewed corn. He asked Eve if she had heard and understood correctly. _Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?_ He had said. She replied, ‘ _God said you must not touch it, or you will die.’_ Which was a load of bollocks; no way that God will kill off his humans just as they started.

 _You’re not going to die,_ he had scoffed.

Questions and dubious answers made Crowley Fall, and they made humans Fall too.

God’s wrath was the second worst Crowley had ever seen. _Get out of the Garden immediately, go find your way in the desert, enjoy the beasts and the storms_. Eve was bent double on the ground, arms curved protectively around her child-heavy stomach, gasping in horror, and suddenly being a Fallen angel stopped being fun. Crowley was a monster. He looked up at an angel standing on the Eastern Gate impossibly high above them, looking down at the two humans. He could see the blaze of the angel’s flaming sword from so far below, and Crowley looked back to see Adam embrace his wife, and Crowley fled.

_But that was on God too, bless it!_

He slithered up to the wall to watch the exile. There was a lion patrolling its usual hunting grounds less than a mile from the Gate. Would the humans even survive the first night?

Bit of an overreaction, if you asked him. He said this to the angel of the Eastern Gate up on the wall with him, who disagreed in a nervous and unconvincing tone. That angel had been a formidable force; there was no doubt that his sword would cut Crowley in half if he were caught, the holy fire burning as badly as holy water. Arcs of flame pulsed off the blade when it was swung, and it spat embers as it cut through lesser weapons. _Ah, Aziraphale,_ Crowley remembered realizing on the Gate. _I remember that one from Before._

Crowley tried not to think often of the skirmish on the edge of Heaven, before his Fall.

Principality Aziraphale, the guardian of humanity, had given away his greatest treasure so humanity could guard themselves. Humans spoke of the flaming sword keeping the gates of Eden shut; no one enters, no one leaves. Now the sword was gone and the Garden was going to be buried in oceans of sand.

 _They looked so cold, poor things, and she's expecting already, and what with the vicious animals out there and the storm coming up I thought..._ The Guardian of the Eastern Gate had nattered, plump hands wringing. His white sparrow wings were out and tremoring like his hands had been. Those blue eyes shone anxiously and he never looked away from the two humans stumbling out into the desert. _But you might be needing this sword, so here it is._

Aziraphale kept explaining, as if Crowley’s understanding on the matter could be absolution.

All Crowley could think was a holy warrior of God had given away the most powerful weapon on Earth at that moment. And he could be bitter that he Fell for hanging out with the wrong crowd and shouting questions, when this angel kept his footing after giving away a holy blessed gift to humanity during their very first punishment. _Or_ , Crowley reasoned, _or_ he could be impressed by thebenevolence of this beautiful, powerful enemy. And resultantly fall in love just a little, and maybe it would be okay because no one would possibly know. He chose the latter. 

This angel was different from his colleagues. Lively and empathetic, all nervous energy and big blue eyes, and so much _more_ than every other corner of Heaven Crowley had seen. Aziraphale looked so distraught, and Crowley had reassured him out of instinct and had done it sarcastically because the angel was being ridiculous, and Aziraphale had shot him the most meltingly relieved grin. The bricks of the Eastern wall seem to fall out from under Crowley’s feet for a moment. They talked and Crowley had made him laugh, and then immediately choke it back with righteous appall, which made Crowley laugh harder. Then freezing water had begun to impossibly fall from the sky and cold-blooded Crowley had instinctively huddled closer to Aziraphale, who sheltered him from the storm with a downy wing that brushed Crowley’s cheek for a moment.

Crowley was smitten. It had taken him two thousand years to admit it to himself.

He had seen this angel in passing a small handful of times, never for long, and not intimately, in the years that followed.

Less than a thousand years after the Garden vanished, Crowley was graced with that same hand-wringing expression when he saw the angel again, watching some crazy human load a massively and unconvincingly seaworthy wooden ship a veritable menagerie. Crowley asked with spiteful glee, what _had_ the humans and Heaven done this time? Aziraphale told him.

God deciding to smash a cracked vase rather than fill the cracks with gold and create something stronger and more beautiful than before. And Aziraphale has been flippant and steadfast in his belief that this would lead to some greater good. _It’s not indiscriminate slaughter,_ Crowley had been told. _Not_ everyone _will die._

In the end, Crowley was no better. He only saved six kids — though technically only five because a fever had taken one of the girls during those forty days cramped in an animal stall. Crowley had tried to miracle it away but he didn’t know enough about what was happening and his request only made the little girl _feel_ better before dying anyway. Crowley had been sick and furious. He was a useless, worthless snake, who helped put all of this into motion in the first place. He was venomous and destructive, and he fantasized about a world in which snakes _healed_.

Later, Crowley remembered putting his hand on a young boy’s shoulder who had gotten the caning of his life for breathing life into clay sparrows, and then wishing he could watch that caning a hundred more times if it meant the nails being driven into the same young man’s wrists would be stopped. He saw Aziraphale again, just as fretful, just as soft, but this time it made him want to scream, _What part of the Plan is okay to you?_

_I’m not consulted on policy decisions, Crowley,_ the angel had said.

Angels lived on a vague concept of _now_ and an unshakable belief in some sort of grand better future none of them could really describe. The Eastern Gate had been a misjudgment. Aziraphale was just like the rest.

Crowley tried to haul his mind back to the present when Aziraphale spoke.

“Just making conversation,” Aziraphale said softly, rejected.

“Well don’t.”

The silence was terrible. Crowley was a bitter, bitter demon and Aziraphale was not at fault for Crowley’s meandering _what if_ thoughts for the past four thousand years. Aziraphale looked at his hands, on the bar, looking completely dejected. Crowley faintly realized this was the first time the angel had instigated an interaction and felt like an ungrateful demon too.

Crowley sighed. “Cup of wine?” He offered, waving the bartender over. “A cup for my acquaintance here!” Actually, the word he used was _notitia_. _One I have come to know._ They didn’t see eye to eye on much of anything, but thousands of years of familiarity certainly put them past normal acquaintances. Belatedly, he recalled humans starting to use the word in more intimate contexts and was glad for the sunglasses hiding his self-conscious eye twitch.

Aziraphale looked pleasantly surprised, then quickly tucked the expression away. The sunglasses were only a slight edge on the angel. It was nearly impossible to read Aziraphale’s moods sometimes, with his _blink and miss it_ expressions.

He self-consciously filled Aziraphale’s cup when the bartender dropped it off and Aziraphale visibly brightened. He lifted the cup in a toast, all smiles again. “Salutaria!” He said, and their cups came together with a sharp note.

“In Rome long?” Aziraphale asked.

Crowley chewed on trying to explain the disappointment of another job being beaten by a human, pooled with the horror of what said human had come up with. That conversation could go nowhere good. “Just nipped in for a quick temptation,” he hedged.

“Tempting anyone special?” Aziraphale asked, bright and curious. This was more small talk than they had ever had. It was always the demon pushing for conversation, and even then, relentlessly questioning the Plan was the only way to get much of a response.

_What in Heaven do you want, Aziraphale?_

And why was Crowley, for all his pushing, so ill-equipped for this focused attention?

“Emperor Caligula,” he answered honestly. “Frankly he doesn’t actually need any tempting to be appalling.” Crowley took very long drink from his cup to drown the stories in his throat. “Going to report it back to head office as a flaming success. You?” Crowley ventured into the small talk territory. The angel had a puzzled grimace. An _ineffable_ assignment then, Crowley knew.

“They want me to influence a boy called Nero.” Not named, Crowley noted, _called_. “I thought I’d get him interested in music.”

“Couldn’t hurt,” Crowley answered ambivalently. “So what else are you up to while in Rome?” _Nero… What is Aziraphale up to here?_ Crowley most certainly only wanted to know so he could demonically obstruct the angel’s holy work. There was no other rationale for his keen interest. 

Abstractly, he was also trying not to feel self-conscious of their shift from debates about God and the value of human life to “hullo chap, how is the weekend?”

He watched with interest as a slow smile crossed Aziraphale’s face. “I thought I’d go to Petronius’ new restaurant. I hear he does _remarkable_ things to oysters,” he answered excitedly, eyes fluttering half-closed with anticipation on the inflection.

 _Remarkable_ , Crowley’s mind echoed happily, tucking those fluttering eyes in his pocket for a rainy day. Crowley blanched and turned back toward his wine cup, hiding a cough with a sip. How in Heaven’s ill graces did two minutes of pleasant conversation bring his flutter at the Eastern Gate right back to the forefront?

“I’ve never eaten an oyster,” Crowley confessed, holding the thread of conversation like a life raft.

“Oh!” Aziraphale exclaimed, then his tone turned unmistakably teasing, “Oh, well let me _tempt_ you to…”

Crowley could not, for all the commendations in Hell, stop himself from from wheeling toward the angel in shock. He set his cup down so he wouldn’t drop it and the noise _clang_ ed between them.

Aziraphale stared back wide-eyed, looking as surprised at his words as Crowley felt. He laughed nervously. “No that’s— that’s your job, isn’t it?”

Never in his life would Crowley have expected an angel to joke about that. And it _still_ wouldn’t have meant anything, except Aziraphale had given away his sword too. He kept demons safe from the rain, and he cared about humans, and he _had_ gotten rather drunk after the Crucifixion so he could not be completely unmoved by it. He _was_ different.

Crowley let the warmth of that snowy sparrow wing shielding him linger curl in the back of his mind without protest.

He tried not to smile too broadly and hid it behind his wine cup, just in case. “I’d quite like to see an ethereal temptation,” he said invitingly.

Aziraphale flushed and didn’t deny him. “Well. Quite.”

And that was as much as Crowley’s heart could resist. He was smitten, he could admit that to himself. _Where might the evening go from here?_ He let his smile go unhidden.

“Does Petronius have better wine than this?” He asked. Aziraphale’s smile as he pulled coins from a pouch was glowing with unmitigated delight.

* * *

1This is not, as the Western world would come to understand it, a place where men made elephants stand on their hind legs and drove lions through flaming circles to fantastical organ melodies. The circus is a chariot racing track. Return to text


End file.
